Worst Best Massage

I have a friend in massage therapy school. Having a friend in massage therapy school is the BEST thing, because sometimes their homework is "give a massage."  I was the fortunate lucky recipient of this assignment a few months ago.

We set a date. I was to go to the friend's house for the massage cause that's where her table was. Perfect. Golden. I'm in.

At 9am the morning of the massage, I received the following email: "Hey, so i dropped my phone in a toliet on saturday. but i wanted to email you and say we are still on for one." Bummer about the phone! But yay, we're still on. I showed up to her place at 1:00 and buzzed the door. And waited. And buzzed again. And waited. I checked my phone to see if she texted--oh right--she didn't have a phone and I couldn't call her. I sent her an email saying "I'm downstairs!" in case she was on her computer and her buzzer was broken. I buzzed again. About 10-15 minutes later, I saw her running down the sidewalk. Her bus had been delayed, and she couldn't text me to tell me. No worries, I was easy breezy. "Next time, we'll start on time," she said.

We went into her apartment. She reminded me that she's been staying in a friend's living room temporarily, so things were in a bit of chaos. There was a futon in the living room and stuff all over the floor.  No worries for me, I get it. She lit an incense stick and started getting her table out to set it up. I asked to use the bathroom.

After I was finished with my business, I tried to flush the toilet. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. I exited the room and told her that it didn't flush. She replied, "Oh, yeah--it only flushes like once every couple of times." and apologized. No worries; if she was ok with it, so was I.  "Next time, I'll be in a different place, so it will be better," she said.

Back in the living room, it became clear that we needed to move the coffee table out of the living room. She asked for help. The coffee table was very large and square with two-tiered shelving. It was also loaded with stuff. We lifted it to try to get it out of the room. It didn't fit through the rectangular doorway. I mentioned to her that we needed to tilt it to get it out, but we had to be careful cause of all the stuff. We angled it a bit, and things started to slide around. She grabbed the incense and put it on a nearby bookcase so it wouldn't fall.  We tilted the table more, and suddenly, everything came sliding off of it--books, papers, food, things--absolutely everywhere. We sort of shrugged like "oh well" and just pushed forward. As we were getting it through the door, I noticed a sudden burning sensation on my left arm. I said to my friend "I am being burned by something." I pulled up my left elbow, and the incense stick was sticking into my arm.  My friend yelled and grabbed it from my arm, but the cherry from the stick was still attached to me. She grabbed that off, too. We set down the table. My arm instantly blistered and started to hurt. She apologized and got some ice cubes from the freezer for me.   "Next time, it will be better, I promise," she said.

As I sat on the couch icing my arm, my friend went to work assembling the table. She pulled some sheets out of a wad on the bed to use, assuring me they were clean. It's ok! I'm easy breezy! Free massage! "Next time, the sheets will look nicer," she said.

I've recently become incredibly sensitive to all sort of bath products. I try to only use paraben free, and I have to make sure that no natural strawberries are used, etc. Facials and massage creams usually break me out, so I asked if I could look at her lotion to double check. I looked at the ingredients, and it looked a-ok with me.

When we were ready to begin, she told me that I could get undressed and under the sheet. She was going to step out of the room. As I started to take off my dress, I realized that the large bay windows only had curtains on 2 out of 3 of the window panes. I looked out of one of them and saw a man walking his dog...which means, he could see me. As I was undressing.  I called to my friend "Hey, is there anyway that people can see up into this window while I change?" She answered "Oh...yeah, they can," and apologized again. I thought for a second and then decided to get under the sheets before taking off my dress. Boom! Brilliant. Let's begin!  "Next time, none of this will happen," she said.

She asked what kind of music I wanted to listen to, and I said "just something relaxing." She chose a nice mellow station on spotify. The massage began. It was awesome. Free massage! This is what it's all about! Burn or no! A few songs in, a really weird one came on. I had never heard it before, and it had a very aggressively pointed female vocalist singing. I tried to not listen to the words, but  few crept in. "La la la the red and green..." It was weird. I let it go, but I started to get giggly. She kept massaging. "LA LA LA LA RED AND GREEN!!!" Finally I burst, "Is this a CHRISTMAS SONG?!?!" and died laughing. She said "Yeah, I don't know WHAT this is!" and changed the channel. I couldn't stop laughing. Or giggling. After all the events of the day. It was the perfect storm. She settled on some Indie rock, and then got down to business.

I'm very happy to say that the massage was amazing, and I felt incredible afterwards. She is very talented, thank goodness! And nothing else bad happened.

That is, until I got home, and my skin was on fire and itching to death from the massage lotion. So I took a shower to wash it off.

Next time will be better.